Banking on KC – Joe Perry of Lee's Summit Economic Development Council
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Joe Perry, the new president of the Lee's Summit Economic Development Council. Welcome, Joe.
Joe Perry:
Thank you, Kelly.
Kelly Scanlon:
So happy to have you here, especially during your first week there at the EDC. Congratulations.
Joe Perry:
Thank you.
Kelly Scanlon:
Before we launch into what's going on in Lee's Summit, which is a whole lot of stuff, how does your background align with that high growth trajectory that Lee's Summit is on right now?
Joe Perry:
Kelly, 25 years ago, a man named David Gale invited me to join his company and I think I was the third hire to do land development and he and I have built a team, started developing 1100 acres 25 years ago, New Longview, Arbor Walk, Winterset Valley, and other projects David and his family and company were involved in. Fast-forward to 15 years ago, Michael Collins invited me to come down to the riverfront and develop financial and development tools for the public sector. And so I think that combination of that 25 years plus the years before that, working on both the private and the public side of real estate development, mostly almost all in Kansas City metropolitan area, was something that I thought might put me in the position to go back to Lee's Summit. It's a homecoming for me. I love the community, I know the community, and I'm just delighted because everything's going so well there now to be able to put that public and private experience to work there again.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah, and there's a lot for you to put it to work towards, because when I say there's growth, we're not talking about a few just big projects. We're talking about growth across all sectors. How are you going to prioritize what you're going to do? What are you going to focus on during your first year here?
Joe Perry:
You can't focus on just one thing in Lee's Summit and do better than just the status quo. We have to look at it holistically, and that means broad and deep. In the last seven or eight years with the current mayor and city council in place, that group with really great professional staff and intensely involved civic and business community have put together 32 approved and now under construction projects in just the last seven or eight years.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's talk about one that is about to open soon, which I think it's late summer. It's called the Green Street Market Plaza. That's going to be a Downtown Lee's Summit where the bank, where Country Club Bank actually has a financial center. Talk to us about that project. What role projects like that play in shaping a thriving mixed use downtown?
Joe Perry:
I will say it's what other suburban communities just are watering at the mouth at when you look at what Lee's Summit's doing. That didn't happen overnight. That amazing project is a public-private partnership, the kind of which you can't do that kind of impactful thing without both sides of that equation working together. That project is about three acres, but it really leverages the acre-ish public plaza they built in front of City Hall when I was working there 20 years ago. And so when you look at that and the way they have leveraged that investment, that public and private side at the both times is so exciting. They already have about 43 vendors that are already at a very normal suburban farmer's market every Saturday. You put that activity that they have maintained over time with the operating group of the Downtown Lee's Summit that Donnie Rogers and his staff runs. So you have soft services and real security and cleanliness crews coming up in support of that is an environment. Now you put this physical element that LANE4 is building and I just can't wait to see what it does.
Kelly Scanlon:
What are some of the things we're going to see there?
Joe Perry:
Well, so there's this public plaza. There's an art installation that leverages three other art installations that already exist in the area. So these great big sculptural elements that you get to walk through and experience from within and from without. Oh, yeah. You go out to the city and LANE4's websites and you can actually do fly-throughs and walk through it and hey, come August you get a walk through it yourself. That's exciting. But then that public plaza, that street has now going to be... Green Street will be a pedestrian plaza in that area, and then you have other opportunities that will come beyond. I was just talking with Ryan Elam in the city manager's office yesterday about exciting opportunities of other buildings in that complex that I am confident with the momentum they have now will start to see those happening in the next two or three years.
Kelly Scanlon:
So that's expected to open this summer, probably late summer, but retail, that's a whole nother thing we have to talk about because it's more than doubled in the last seven years from what I understand. So I'm eager to hear what kind of factors have fueled that kind of momentum in a time when we hear that everything's going online, what is driving that retail, and how do you plan to help sustain and even scale that success?
Joe Perry:
I think the storytelling that Lee's Summit has done well and will continue to do more of is that it isn't just the downtown that it's doubled. It's also all of those nodes that they have done differently and potentially better than a lot of the other competition in the metro. New Longview, the Summit Fair, Summit Woods, the Streets of Pryor, the development around Lakewood and in South Lee's Summit. These are areas that compliment not compete with the downtown retail because they have done both simultaneously over time. If we develop strategies to continue that and leverage that even more, they haven't taken one approach over the other. They have done it together over time, and I think we just have to continue that kind of growth and see them as complimentary rather than competitive.
Kelly Scanlon:
One thing that strikes me in what you've said already is the collaborative spirit in all of this, which is really refreshing to see these days to get people to agree on common goals and then to see the successful outcomes of those goals.
Joe Perry:
Well, you mentioned the bank. I was in that lobby yesterday of the new facility that Country Club did downtown, and it struck me at the time thinking about what you and I might talk about today, that that's the same decision that this entity made. You had strong suburban retail environments for your bank in Lee's Summit and you made the investment downtown, not in spite of the other investments you had, but to amplify it and to give that choice to that community. When you think about the education infrastructure, the retail, the jobs, workforce development that's going on in that community that are all enviable, all of them have that complimentary set of physical places that are dynamic and different than just a monolith.
Kelly Scanlon:
Let's move on to the healthcare sector.
Joe Perry:
Oh, well, let's do.
Kelly Scanlon:
Lots going on there. There's three major hospitals in Lee's Summit and not just one, but every one of the three is expanding. How are those investments going to contribute to the city's broader economic landscape and the workforce pipeline that you just mentioned?
Joe Perry:
Well, the multiplier effect of having a job in healthcare is crazy of what it does for economic activity in a community. Just like happened two decades ago with all three of those hospitals, two of which were already in the community and one that came new, and then you see those investments happen at the same time. Someone on the outside that like myself, that doesn't understand healthcare provision might've thought, "Well, one of them won't survive," but instead all three have thrived and grown together. So now you have all these subspecialties that we don't have in any other place than maybe KU Madden Hospital Hill and a few other places in the metro. So now you have people coming from Sedalia in Jefferson City to Lee's Summit and other parts of the metro and region of both states to seek these specialties. And guess what? They're going to the retail.
Kelly Scanlon:
They're eating lunch there. They're supporting the businesses that-
Joe Perry:
And then you have University of Central Missouri and the community college and the high schools, by the way, with innovative workforce development that they're working together. Yesterday I was on a call with members of all three of those levels plus companies providing training in that community. It's just exciting to see everybody working together and everyone coordinated together. You've got a child at age 12 can see that, and then at age 18 can be getting trained in the high school specialty programs for medical and go on to UCM or the community college and continue that training, and all of a sudden you have someone working in there that never left the Lee's Summit community.
Kelly Scanlon:
Right, and they invested in it. On top of what's going on with the medical centers, you've also got a big wave of development that's happening in places like the Oldham Village, Discovery Park, Bailey Farms, I could go on and on. So talk to us about what's driving that level of development activity and what it's going to mean for businesses and residents.
Joe Perry:
Look, when I went to work for David Gale, he taught me a few things, but one is we do business in Lee's Summit because there's certainty of process and outcomes. And so when I was interviewed to go to the Port Authority 15 years ago, I talked about that and I think that's what was one of our successes at the Port Authority under Michael Collins and John Stevens leadership there, where I got to work as part of the team. When I interviewed for this job in Lee's Summit, I said the same thing. I learned that here. I honed that in the last 15 years at the Port Authority. I think we're ready in Lee's Summit to just blow that up even more than you're already doing well, I learned it there. They kept doing it better and better, and I think it's time just to look at that and look at ways, how can we make that process of investment decision faster and still meet the light of day that the people that vote people into Office and Lee's Summit get an honest return on that investment?
And when you have a community that's willing to have those hard conversations in public, taking on those hard decisions that a community has to make to create an environment that people want to invest in. So I think that's the answer to the question you just posed is how do we increase that certainty of outcome and still protect the public good and make sure that it's good for the community going forward? I couldn't have asked for an assignment at my place and age in my career that I'm more excited about, that is the certainty of outcomes, the purity of the process that someone has to go through. I would tell you, after doing this for 35 plus years, I know how to sell that because that's an easy sell to make when you're making those hard decisions of there are multiple places, great places in the metropolitan area that I admire that someone could compete with Lee's Summit for those investments. But based on what I just said, that's the reason why I took this particular job.
Kelly Scanlon:
You're pretty confident about Lee's Summit.
Joe Perry:
I am pretty confident that no matter what happens in the community, that they're going to still be sticking together civically business community, professional city staff, and elected officials keep those outcomes and those certainties of processes in place.
Kelly Scanlon:
One of the things when it comes to economic development that people probably don't think about a lot. I mean, I don't know if they have to think about it at all, and that is the importance of public safety infrastructure when it comes to economic development. So how does that civic investment play into the overall economic development picture of Lee's Summit right now?
Joe Perry:
Lee's Summit can walk and chew gum at the same time. 32 major projects have been approved. At the same time when you look at the, we'll just talk about fire stations first. In that same seven year, eight year experience of 32 projects getting off the ground, they have approved two major fire stations to be built and constructed, and that's underway. In addition, a joint facility for police and fire and training of public safety, these are things that a lot of people would forego because they were concentrated on supporting private development activities. And I think that their ability to do both at the same time has been proven out. We're putting people in places of decision-making that are producing both things simultaneously on the cost of that and how maybe they're doing it differently.
I think if you look into their strategic and comprehensive planning as a city, it's not only up to date, but again, they had the honest conversation of what are the costs of the change to the community that's going on when a community is a 50,000 person community or less than 50,000 just a few decades ago, and you're sitting there 107,000 today, when you look at that rapid growth, that's often what gets lost, keeping up with infrastructure or having deferred maintenance. So the financial resiliency that allows the next generation to do the same thing, they haven't mortgaged against their future like a lot of communities. Their financial resiliency is enviable.
Kelly Scanlon:
And the other thing about the public safety investment, when you talk about fire and police departments, it's not only keeping up with the growth that's in the city, but it attracts new growth. People want to come live in safe cities, they want to have businesses in a safe area so that their customers can feel safe, their employees, their staff can feel safe. So you've got all of that going on there. And then in addition to that, you mentioned earlier about the high school and about Central Missouri State, the education, the cornerstone that that is for any kind of a community, especially a growing one. So you've got expansions. You mentioned at MCC Longview, there's a Summit Technology Academy. So talk in a broader sense about how Lee's Summit is positioning itself as a talent hub.
Joe Perry:
I've only recently really come to appreciate this piece of it, the workforce development size, that intersection. You can continue job growth for a long time as a community for a while, maybe not a long time, by not addressing the intersection between housing and workforce and the intersection between workforce development and companies wanting to make those investments in your community. Lee's Summit got that early. I don't know all of the story of how UCM got there. I don't know all the story of how Lee's Summit R7 and Blue Springs School District have worked collaboratively with both MCC and UCM. But I will tell you that the real results, when I look at companies that are being supportive, the healthcare we've already talked about, but there's manufacturing. You get great big employers in the metro.
We'll just use Honeywell because they're not in Lee's Summit, but they're a few miles down the road to the west where you have 4,000 plus engineers sitting there who need specialized training, who need workforce development on a specific new thing, and they go to institutions like Longview, like UCM to train those up. Sometimes under contract, sometimes on an ad hoc basis. But when you put all those people together, like Lee's Summit has, and I mentioned, I was in a meeting yesterday with about 8 or 10 people at all levels of the education sitting down at a group together, talking about workforce development for Lee's Summit business community. That just isn't replicated a lot. The real economic impact to a current or a future employer is real. It's measurable. And again, it's marketable.
Kelly Scanlon:
We're really at a watershed moment when it comes to workforce development because you still need, and we're all familiar with the skilled trades and how they're just screaming for people, but at the same time, we're hearing more and more about AI and how it's going to change jobs and it's going to create jobs. It's going to eliminate other jobs. And so when you're talking about your workforce development, how do you get your arms around not just what the current situation is, say with the skill trains, but looking at what's coming down the road? How do you start preparing for that early and not just when you're finally in the midst of it?
Joe Perry:
When you're a guy with a real estate finance and an architecture degree in your background, you listen to those eight people at the table because they said things yesterday because I used to just be okay with just saying, "Well, kind of AI is the new STEM from the last decade." So that's the way we organize people like myself who aren't learned in that field of workforce development, but are certainly dependent on it. You listen to those people at the table. They were talking about things past AI yesterday.
Kelly Scanlon:
So industrial growth, you've got the Lee's Summit Commerce Center, and you've got other industrial spaces in pre-development. How is the EDC attracting the growth there? There was an acceleration of interest in the industrial space when online became a thing. They needed a place to store goods and to get them to people quickly once they were ordered. And then it fell off a little bit, if I remember. So how are you still, at least attracting the industrial attention and preparing for even more industrial development?
Joe Perry:
Well, industrial and industrial land is the big constraining regional focus. So you've got a few things that are competing for resources for industrial development in Kansas City. One is power. That's a nationwide issue, right? That's not a Kansas City only issue, but then you have close in land because Kansas City has gotten an outsized portion of that national pie in the last 15 to 20 years. Lee's Summit has done well and they have a growing momentum. The key that Lee's Summit has going forward that we would've said they as a community didn't have five years ago, is the first 1800 acres of the Mormon land that has been held for decades for future development.
So you have the first 1800 acres on the north end of Lee's Summit that is now available for development and a large piece of that will be set aside for industrial development according to the approved city plans. So that's exciting because few people have interstate served one mile off the interstate land available anywhere in the metro anymore. We've used it all up and that 1800 acres and the promise of 3,400 more acres within the city Lee's Summit on the south end is mouthwatering. No one, I don't think in the metro, has close end land of which part will be industrial like Lee's Summit has. And if you want to ask me why personally did I first, why would I leave a job and a team I love at Port KC, that opportunity was one of the top three.
Kelly Scanlon:
As much as you have going on right now in Lee's Summit, how are you going to sustain this? I know that the EDC is one part of it, but you have so many other organizations and people in what you could consider the big ecosystem of Lee's Summit. What's it going to take from all the players in that ecosystem to continue this and sustain it?
Joe Perry:
Well, I'll talk about in one more of the top three reasons what attracted me to pursue this position. Lee's Summit has just put in an office for tourism. They hired Cori Day who has extensive statewide and local experience in driving the experience of someone coming to your community. And you couple that on top of the downtown Main Street program with Downtown Lee's Summit that Donnie Rogers and his team, he has a whole raft of people down there doing special events and programming the downtown experience on a daily basis, not just for special events. And then you have the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce has been in Lee's Summit for over, I believe, 60 or more years, and Matt Baird and his big staff have a broad range to offer the business community a way to interface with all of this activity.
So you have tourism, a downtown, a chamber, an EDC, and then you have this professional city hall staff. You put all five of those things together and everybody is working together. Literally, Lee's Summit created a brand that we all use. We're united. From the outside looking in, you don't even have to know which one you need to talk to because I am confident after, okay, my third day on the job, but I'm pretty confident-
Kelly Scanlon:
I think I use the word confident with you a little earlier.
Joe Perry:
Yeah, I'm pretty confident that any of us, if the phone rings, we wouldn't say, "Oh, well, you should have called the Chamber." No. We would say, "Oh no, we'll get right back to you." And I might call Donnie or Cori or Matt or Mark Dunning or Rick Elam or someone else in City Hall and then come back with the answer. I don't think any of us would, and that's sort of seamlessness that we're all in the same thing. We're literally all branded together that a user doesn't have to guess if they made the right phone call or not. We're all going to work together and see that that resident or that visitor or that potential new investor into the community is going to get an answer that helps them navigate Lee's Summit. So I think that was really the thing. That word collaboration gets knocked around a lot, but when it's real, it just is the secret sauce.
Kelly Scanlon:
And the secret sauce boils down to serving the community, the businesses, the residents, and the tourists that are there. Anybody who interacts within the city boundaries serving them.
Joe Perry:
And on that word boundary, I'll challenge everyone in the metro. Most of us don't know where those boundaries are.
Kelly Scanlon:
That's true. That's very true. You go in and over them all the time.
Joe Perry:
When I think about Lee's Summit or Independence or Kansas City, Missouri or Grandview or any other community that borders Lee's Summit, when they win, we win. And every time I think that Lee's Summit might not get a certain thing, well, I hope that one of those others I just mentioned does, and we'll all grow together and I'll try to stay laser focused on the jurisdiction that I'm responsible for, and boy, I will compete, but at the same time, I will celebrate the successes of our neighbors and look at ways that the Lee's Summit community can benefit from those wins that they get.
Kelly Scanlon:
What's that old saying? A rising tide raises all boats?
Joe Perry:
Amen.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yes. Thank you again for coming here, giving us this update. So many exciting things happening, and it sounds like with your new position, we're going to see even more things on the horizon. So again, thank you. I know it's a busy week being your first week, and I really appreciate you coming in today.
Joe Perry:
Kelly, thank you. It's been a delight.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Joe Perry, president of Lee's Summit Economic Development Council for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. As Joe shared, Lee's Summit is experiencing remarkable growth across all sectors from retail and industrial development to healthcare and education. Through collaboration among civic leaders, businesses, and community organizations, Lee's Summit is building a vibrant future, driven by thoughtful investment and a strong sense of community. At Country Club Bank, we don't just invest dollars in the communities we serve, we strive to be a part of them. That's why we open the financial center in the heart of Downtown Lee's Summit to support the businesses, residents, and visitors who are shaping the city's bright future. Next time you're on Third Street, stop in and say hello. We'd love to get to know you. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City and Lee's Summit. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.